Moving to Nyamata

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Here is my house.  It is a huge!  When I arrived I had to take a moment to realize that I would be living alone in a seven room home, with eight pieces of furniture (and glad to have them) along with one mosquito net, one water filter, and one hotplate in the middle of a Rwandan village by myself.  Even I am not shaking a stick at that.

Upon arrival with my manager we discovered that the keys we had been given did not fit the lock on the gate and after several calls to the landlord one of the tallest and thinnest men I have ever seen came ambling down the street with a large smile on his face and  key in hand.  This was Oswalimu, one of my neighbors, who seems to act as some sort of broker for the landlord and is called in to handle just such situations.  Unfortunately, Owalimu’s smile did not last long as this was not the key.  Now because I do not speak or, at this point, understand much Kinyarwanda I was unsure of what the next steps would be, what the ensuing conversations were about, or who they were continually calling. 

My Steet

What I did know, however, was that we were quickly becoming more and more of an attraction and I was definitely not making a quiet entrance into the neighborhood as many of the local school children came by to introduce themselves, people stopped on bikes to take a gander, and a small crowd was forming across the lane at the local hole in the wall sundries shop.  While we waited I peeked over the cement block wall that surrounds the house to check out my new home and was incredibly pleased by the looks of it.  I was especially excited to see that there was a plumera tree in the yard, my absolute favorite, and banana trees as some backyard neighbors.  I also took in the fact that there was a water spicket in the yard, as well as an electric line running to the house.  Sweet. 

Light was beginning to fade as a very unobtrusive young man made his way down the street and as he neared us was roundly chided for not having a cell phone or at least for not having it on (again I am guessing as surrounded by much Kinyarwanda was the word “phone”).  It turns out this is Theogene, the current guard for the house who indeed has all the right keys to open the gate and let us into this huge house.  Luckily for me my manager was on the ball and quickly sent Theogene to buy some electrical credit for me. Where he did this I have no idea, but know for 1,000 Rwandan Francs I will have the pleasure of electricity for the next two weeks. 

Perhaps even more luckily the driver who had come with my manager to pick me up knew one of my neighbors and was chatting with her as we waited for the right key.  This neighbor is a young lady of about 20, lives two doors down, goes to university in Uganda on the weekends, has an internship with an HIV-AIDS organization, and speaks excellent English.  The lucky part is that while my manager had to leave she volunteered to stay and help me with translation as Theogene and Oswalimu put my bed together, moved the few pieces of furniture, explored which of the sixty keys fit which doors, showed me how the water worked, and cleaned out a room that had flooded.  She also helped me negotiate the terms of Theogene’s employment as my guard (something very common here-see picture), and agreed to come meet me the next day to take me to the market to buy some curtains.  I could not have done it with out her and was thrilled to have met such a lovely neighbor so soon.

I was also glad that she had assured me the neighborhood was quite safe as there is a police barracks nearby.  Mostly I am glad she told me this or I may have been a bit more concerned by the 5:00 shouting and running about that I could then attribute to police conditioning, rather than something unknown.

While it is a bit daunting to have such a large house that, as it turns out, I share with some monster spiders, one cockroach, and loads of lovely geckos, I am most thankful it is such a nice house, has electricity, water, and a plumera tree.